Improving the maintenance, the cleanliness and the sanitation features of conventional toilets and toilet seats has been the subject of many efforts to provide improved toilet seats, toilet bowls and means for connecting them. It has been found that cleaning and sanitizing is complicated by the intricacies of hinge-like interconnections between the pivoted seat ring and the bowl flange of a toilet bowl and by the inconvenient location and the often unsavory condition thereof. In many installations, the problems are aggravated by the hinge-like interconnection of a separate seat cover mounted above the seat. Access to the area around those interconnections is difficult and inconvenient and maintenance in that area is often distasteful. Partial solutions to these problems have been suggested by many.
One early effort to gain accessibility to the seat, bowl flange and the mounting area to facilitate maintenance is shown in a 1962 patent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,055,015. Bushings are bolted in the bowl flange apertures and a post extends from the seat through each bushing to connect the seat to the bowl flange. A spring arm on each post engages the bushing to releasably hold the seat in place on the bowl flange. The seat can be released and pulled upwardly to totally remove the seat for maintenance. This approach presents additional problems for maintenance personnel. Typically, the unsanitary separated seat assembly must be placed on a remote surface for cleaning and sanitizing. This results in excessive handling and touching of contaminated toilet seats, and subjects additional surface areas to contamination. The open apertures in the bowl flange bushing will collect debris and cleaning materials that are difficult to remove. Moreover, a configuration relying on total separation of the seat assembly from the toilet bowl will be more subject to vandalism and theft, especially in commercial applications.
Many years later, another approach to the same problems was shown in a 1980 patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,307. In that approach, a bolt is secured in each bowl flange aperture with a mounting ball on the bolt above the bowl flange of a residential toilet. This does seal the apertures in the bowl flange against contamination. The seat is supported on each bowl flange ball by a mating hinged fastener. The fastener has a tab and side walls enclosing a slotted socket that engages the associated ball. For maintenance, the seat must be pulled from the bowl flange by lifting the tabs and separating the sockets from the balls. Such arrangements also present the problems of excessive handling and touching of the unsanitary detached seat, or seat and cover assembly, and a tendency to place it on remote surfaces for cleaning and sanitizing. Such an approach using releasable fasteners creates additional new problems. The protruding bowl flange ball creates new problems in bowl flange maintenance and the complex exposed fastener with a tab and socket present additional difficulties in removing and remotely resting the seat for maintenance. Other arrangements for detachment and remote storage of a toilet seat are found in the prior art for residential type toilet seats having two hinges, releasably connected to a device secured to the bowl flange.